Setting The Tone of the Season #SoundsOfTheHolidays

I love family traditions. Being busy parents, I admit we don’t have many. However there is one that we have kept every year. Since before we had children, my husband and I have always made a point of decorating our Christmas tree together. It’s a memory we both have from when we were children and so it was an easy tradition to start as we built our own family. We didn’t always have money to buy each other gifts or do much else through the holidays, but one thing we have always made sure to do is to crank up the Christmas music, pour a glass of eggnog and get out our box of random decorations. In the beginning, it was a small box but over the years it has grown, collecting homemade decorations, ones we’ve received as gifts and special pieces that belonged to important people in our families.

Our eclectic collection of decorations

Now that we are parents of course, our children play a huge role in this tradition. They love decorating that tree and we love watching them. We don’t care about having a designer tree. We aren’t even picky about placement or spacing. We let the kids at it and if it means all of our decorations are bunched together in one spot, then so be it! We hope that when they are grown, they will have fond memories of this yearly tradition and continue with their own families.

Here is my ultimate #SoundsOfTheHolidays playlist.

Diana Krall – Jingle Bells

Coldplay – Christmas Lights

Sufjan Stevens – Christmas in the Room

Train – Joy to the World

Mormon Tabernacle Choir – Carol of the Bells

Weezer – The First Noel

She & Him – Christmas Wish

Paul McCartney – Wonderful Christmastime

Indina Menzel & Michael Bublé – Baby It’s Cold Outside

Josh Groban – O Holy Night

One thing that has changed over time is how we play our music. In our little apartment before having kids, we used to play it through my husband’s old stereo system, with one speaker that would crackle and occasionally cut out. Then when downloading music became more popular, we would play it through the speakers on our PC (you can imagine how great that sound quality was! Ha!). The last couple of years, we have streamed through our cell phone by placing it in a bowl to increase the volume (seriously, it works!).

This year we are obsessed with streaming apps such as Songza and Jango and the best part is that we finally have a grown-up system! Our new Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth Speaker! We have experienced Bose sound before and we knew the quality was amazing – but I admit to being slightly skeptical when I saw the size of this speaker. Well I can assure you while the size is small, there’s nothing “mini” about the sound. Plus, since it’s wireless, I can bring it to any room I’d like and I don’t have to worry about finding somewhere to plug it in.

Check out the size of this speaker (between the plants!) – for size reference, that’s a 7″ tablet on top of the bread box (we were streaming music from the tablet to the speaker).This is the speaker docked on the charging cradle. It can be removed from the dock for up to 7 hours of wireless playing!

So tell me, what songs are at the TOP of your list? Do you let your kids decorate your tree or do you prefer to do it yourself?

Entrepreneur, Child-Wrangler and Domestic-Goddess-Wannabe, Jenn is a married, mother of two. She is also the founder of That's So Social and Editor in Chief of Travel Mavens.
Likes: travel, eggs benedict, yoga pants, dogs, and Netflix.